


Some Time to Reflect

by SingingInTheRaiin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (in the statement), Gen, M/M, Season 1 era, Statement Fic, Suicide, job hunting is bad for one's health, pretty early season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21657214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheRaiin/pseuds/SingingInTheRaiin
Summary: There's a creepy statement with no name or date attached to it, a wasted cup of tea, and an opportunity for lunch for two.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	Some Time to Reflect

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished binging through all four seasons of tma. It'll be torture waiting until April for more, but until then, there's always the fics lol

Elias paused as he stepped into his office. He wasn’t sure why, but something about it felt strange to him. Something foreign. Perhaps the influence of one of the other fears? Though it was hard to say for sure since the archives always contained hints of all the fears through the statements that filled it. 

As he cautiously approached his desk, he spotted the thing that was out of place. There on the floor was a piece of paper that Elias had certainly not left there. There wasn’t yet reason for any of the archives staff to try and harm him (though he was sure that that would change sooner or later), and there were very few others who would actually be able to access his office. There was more than just a lock on the door to keep out unwanted visitors.

He crouched down to pick up the paper, and quickly recognized it as a statement, though there was no indication that it had ever been officially given, considering it was written on a piece of yellowed notebook paper in messy print, and there was no stamp at the bottom to proclaim that it had been processed and sorted. 

Elias let out a thoughtful hum as he scanned over the statement. He could feel something of a tension headache build up as his frown grew deeper the further in he got. Then when he reached the end of the somewhat confusingly written tale, he turned to look at the old mirror that had been hanging on the wall since he’d first stepped into his new office.

After a moment, Elias set the paper down on his desk so that he could slip off his jacket, and drape it over the mirror to cover it entirely. With that taken care of he turned back to grab the statement so that he could properly dispose of it, but paused when he saw that it was no longer on his desk. He glanced at the ceiling, and grumbled, “What are you playing at?” as if he expected the Institute itself to have an answer for him. Then he let out a tired sigh and settled down at his desk. There wasn’t anything to be done about it now. Besides, Jon pretended not to believe most of the statements anyways, so there was hardly any immediate danger if he were to stumble across it. Still, there was a sense of unease brought about by the situation, and Elias hated feeling uneasy.  
,,,

Sasha immediately spotted an out of place paper when she walked into the research office, because she always kept her desk organized. It wasn’t exactly a neat and tidy affair like Jon’s was, but she was completely aware of every single thing on and in it, and that paper had definitely not been there when she’d packed up to head out the night before.

She peered down at the paper, not wanting to touch it if there was anything strange about it, but relaxed when she realized it was just a statement. Clearly a badly misfiled one. Or maybe it had just fell to the floor near her desk and someone had assumed that it fell off of the desk.

Sasha glanced towards the door of Jon’s office, but the lights were still off. He’d been at home the past few days because of illness, but was supposed to be back in today, and he was always on time. Which meant that there was still a few minutes left until he’d be in, so Sasha decided to take a minute to read the thing. Usually all she got were scraps of information or names to look into, but actually reading and taking the statements wasn’t part of her job.

By the time she finished reading, Sasha couldn’t help feeling as though someone was watching her, and she glanced over her shoulder. The lights were still off in Jon’s office, but for just the briefest moment, Sasha could have sworn that she saw movement in the glass window next to the door. She shuddered, and then went to grab the paper to bring it to be properly filed, but it was gone. Surely not the strangest thing to take place in the archives, but still, Sasha didn’t like it.  
,,,

Martin had been happy to hear that Jon was going to be back after taking several days of sick leave, but when he entered Jon’s office with a cup of hot tea for the man, he couldn’t help thinking that it looked like Jon still needed another few days to recuperate. He cleared his throat to announce his arrival, but Jon didn’t even glance up from whatever he was in the middle of writing down. 

Martin sighed, and then set the mug down on Jon’s desk. “I would have brought you my famous chicken soup to help you get better, but I didn’t know you’d be coming in while you’re still sick.”

For some reason that did make Jon look up, and there was an indignant look on his face. “I’m fine,” he insisted, despite the fact that he looked alarmingly pale and there were dark bags under his eyes. 

Martin made a soft noise of disbelief, but he knew that there was no point in arguing with his boss, so he turned to leave when it was clear that Jon was already done with the meager conversation. He heard a crinkle as he took a step forward, though, and Martin glanced down to see a piece of notebook paper on the floor.

He was pretty sure that Jon didn’t write his notes in an ordinary notebook (Jon just seemed like the type to have fancy leather bound books with the little ribbons in them), so he picked up the paper to give it a glance. “Did you drop a statement?”

Jon mumbled something incomprehensible, and Martin set the paper down on Jon’s desk for him to look at later. He wanted to say something else, but he wasn’t actually sure of what he could say, so he just silently left the office. As he did, he couldn’t help feeling like there were eyes on him, but when he turned back and peered through the little window, he saw Jon’s head still bent over as he scribbled away. Martin shrugged, and headed back to his desk where he’d already set down a cup of tea for himself. It’s not like weirdness wasn’t to be expected in a place like this.  
,,,

Jon almost felt a tiny bit bad for being so dismissive of Martin, but it’s not like it was nice for the other man to point out that he looked like shit. It wasn’t Jon’s fault, not really. He hadn’t even wanted to come in to work today.

It had only been a couple of months since he had been promoted to Head Archivist, and while it was an impressive enough title that came with a decent pay, Jon couldn’t help feeling like he’d somehow stumbled his way into a job that he wasn’t ready for. 

It’s not as though it was particularly difficult- though trying to figure out his predecessor's pathetic excuse for organization was rather frustrating. But honestly, Jon had only ever gotten a job at the Institute in the first place as a way to make money on the side while he got through university. He hadn’t expected to still be here several years later. 

At least in research he’d felt somewhat productive, but reading clearly fake stories all day was hardly doing anything, and also made him feel strangely exhausted for such a small amount of work. Especially on the days he came across stories that refused to be digitally recorded, no matter how many times he called IT and asked for help. And then when he did come across the occasional story that seemed like it had the potential to be real, he couldn’t help thinking of his own story that could be a statement, and he would be wracked with full body shivers. 

Jon just felt like maybe there was more he could be doing with his life, more that he was supposed to be doing. Just because he’d had a single encounter with the so-called supernatural- and even that could probably be chalked up to the active imagination of a lonely boy- didn’t mean that he needed to be stuck looking at the results of everyone else’s overactive imaginations. 

So he’d taken a few days off from work. He claimed to be sick even though he’d been feeling fine. It wasn’t until his second day off that he started to feel queasy. Right around breakfast time, and he’d had to drop the job listings page of the newspaper and rush to the bathroom to vomit. He’d only felt worse throughout the day, and had called in sick again the next morning when he felt like he could barely even get out of bed.

Then his boss, Elias, had called to ask him how he was doing, and to remind him that he was still needed at the Institute. And, well, Jon could hardly go searching for a new job with only his limited savings, so he’d resolved himself to push through whatever bug he was suffering through, and dragged himself to work. 

He still felt awful, though his voice worked well enough to record more statements. By the time he went through a few digitals and then finished with his first tape recording of the day, he found that he felt almost entirely back to normal. And the research assignments that he handed out, and got back from previous statements, were enough to keep him distracted enough from thinking of getting a new job.

So anyways, the point was that it wasn’t his fault he’d come into work looking so sick, and it had been quite rude of Martin to say anything about it. Honestly, Jon had no idea how someone like Martin had ever been hired if he talked like that during his job interview.

Jon leaned back in his seat and let out a tired sigh, though it was almost a good tiredness, like the kind that came after a nice workout. Not that Jon worked out, but theoretically, they left a good tiredness behind. 

He reached out to grab the mug of tea that always seemed to mysteriously appear on his desk every day around lunchtime, and took a deep gulp. It was still warm enough to be drinkable, and had been made just how he liked it. Then he reached out to grab the next statement from the stack. 

He rolled his eyes when he saw that it was handwritten, on notebook paper of all things. Honestly, the only real horror Jon dealt with in the Institute was the way that everyone who worked here before Jon seemed to delight in making Jon’s job as difficult as possible. Still, a statement was a statement. 

He tried to record it digitally first, just like he did with all of them, but when that didn’t work, he just let out an annoyed sigh and grabbed the tape recorder.

_Statement of an unidentified person regarding a broken mirror. Original statement given at an unknown point in time. Audio recording by Jonathon Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins._

_Whenever people say that breaking a mirror would bring seven years of bad luck, I found it quite difficult to believe. Mirrors are made of such weak materials that surely bad luck would be handed out like candy, right? I guess I was just never the superstitious type._

_But that doesn’t mean that I ever had any reason to just go around smashing mirrors to prove a point. I’ve never been a particularly violent person, and that kind of pointless destruction would just be… pointless. I guess I was raised that way, since both of my parents were anti-war hippies in the sixties and they never really grew out of it. They were both American, by the way, though I’m not sure if that matters. And yeah, they were on the old side when they had me, though you wouldn’t guess that by the way they acted._

_Anyways, the point is that I never believed in the stuff about mirrors. Or any of those other ways to get so much bad luck. Didn’t seem to be much point in believing. My dad always said that your luck is what you make it, and that seemed like as good a rule as any._

_But then a lot of bad things happened all at once, and I don’t know how it could be called anything but bad luck. My dad got hit by a truck and killed and my mum drowned on the beach and went into a coma a few months later. I was seventeen, so my older brother took a year off from school to take care of me until I could go to university for myself, and he clearly resented me for it. My best friend moved away, my girlfriend cheated on me, I got fired from my job at the market because I was accused of stealing- which I never did. My grades plummeted and all my teachers said that I was probably going to stay back a year, which only made things worse with my brother. My cat ate both of my fish and then ran away, I broke my ankle when I tripped and fell down the stairs. I lost the necklace with my parents’ wedding rings on it, and my favorite teddy bear got torn apart by a snag in the washing machine. All of that happened within less than a year, so it’s hard to believe that I wasn’t cursed by bad luck, right?_

_I was worried that my brother would leave me to fend for myself the moment I turned eighteen, so I found another job, working at an antiques shop. I decided that I wouldn’t even worry about my grades, because I’d never been a top level student anyways, and it seemed like I had no chance of getting into university unless they handed out a pity acceptance._

_My boss at the shop was nicer than my old boss, but a bit weird. Not like in a creep kind of way, though. More in that he was always there, but almost never in the front. I think maybe he slept in the backroom, but I don’t know because I was never allowed back there. It’s not like he didn’t trust me, because he left me alone in the building for hours on end sometimes. I just wasn’t allowed in back. He also never seemed happy when we actually made a sale, and in fact seemed to go out of his way to scare off customers. I never got my paycheck bounced, though. Maybe he was running secret card games out the back to make money._

_There was this one guy my boss loved, and always bought new things from him. Well, I say ‘new’, but they were all antiques. Anyways, it’s been a while, but I think the dealer’s name was Salsa, or something. Now that I think about it, it probably wasn’t Salsa, because there probably that many people with the last name of a condiment, but that’s not important._

_The important bit is that one day the dealer came by when the boss was out. Something like this had never happened before, but my boss trusted me to accept things from other dealers that he bought from, and everything was always paid for in advance so I didn’t need to worry about that. I figured that this would be no different just because it was Salsa._

_I said I’d sign for the package, and I’ll never forget the way he asked “Are you sure?” It made me feel strangely afraid, even though I quickly brushed it aside because whatever deal was going on between my boss and Salsa was their business. I signed with my boss’ name, just like he’d taught me to, and then accepted the package._

_Now usually new things from Salsa immediately went into the backroom. But I wasn’t allowed in the backroom, and I didn’t want to break the one rule that my boss had always been so strict about. I was just grateful to have a job at all. But something about Salsa had creeped me out, and I was suddenly struck with the overwhelming urge to make sure that my boss wasn’t secretly a drug kingpin or something._

_So I tore the paper off of the package, not sure what to expect. The box inside was pretty big, longer than one of my arms, and I opened it carefully. Inside was the ugliest mirror I’d ever seen- and working in an antiques shop, I’d seen plenty of ugly mirrors before._

_But once I looked away from the edges and at the mirror itself, I realized that it didn’t work. And I know, you’re probably wondering how a mirror could possibly just not work. It didn’t, though. Instead of showing my reflection, it showed my boss’. I suddenly got the feeling that signing for the package using his name had just doomed him to some awful fate, and I refused to be the reason that something bad happened to him._

_Maybe I was overreacting, and maybe the mirror was worth more than I could ever afford, and I was pretty sure I’d get fired for it, but I grabbed the fire axe from the box on the back wall, and I smashed up the mirror. As I did, I could have sworn that I heard it screaming. Yeah, the mirror was screaming. And I didn’t stop with the glass, I chopped up the frame too._

_Then I kept holding the axe, because something inside of me said that the danger wasn’t over yet. And when I looked out at the shop, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in one of the many other mirrors on display. Only it wasn’t my face. Instead, every single mirror I looked at showed my boss’ face._

_I don’t know what I was thinking at that point, I think it might have just been adrenaline fueling me, but I went and smashed every single mirror in the shop to pieces. Then I realized that even my reflection in the windows of the shop were him, so I smashed those too. If one mirror equals seven years of bad luck, I don’t even want to know how many years I’ve wracked up._

_Someone obviously called the police about the maniac smashing up a shop’s windows with an axe in broad daylight, and I knew that even if they never believed me, running away would only make things worse. So I stayed behind the counter to wait, and ended up smashing that too. In the time it took for the police to show up, I managed to destroy every reflective surface in the shop._

_A cop approached me very slowly, and told me to put the axe down. I started to, but then I saw my boss’ face in the police badge pinned to his shirt. Don’t worry, even in the midst of whatever was going on, I was not crazy enough to take an axe to a person’s chest. It just made me realize that I’d never be able to escape from being watched and haunted. I don’t know if it’s even possible to live a life free of anything shiny. Even a puddle of water on the ground shows your reflection, right? Only, I’d never see my own reflection again._

_While I thought about that, I started to cry, and the cop was able to take the axe away from me. He didn’t actually seem to feel very threatened, though that was probably because I was a white female teenager who was short for my age. He didn’t cuff me, either, and I think he was trying to ask me what had happened. He was probably just trying to help._

_But I didn’t want help, I just wanted to escape. The past year had been nothing but rotten luck, and even now I can’t say whether I had such terrible luck because the world somehow knew what I was going to do, or if I acted in desperation because I knew I had nothing left anyways._

_I grabbed the nearest sharp object before the cop could react, and I stabbed myself in the neck with it. It wasn’t until I pulled it out, though, that I realized what I’d done. The piece that I grabbed was from the mirror, the one that I had smashed first._

_I fell to the ground and the cop radioed for help as he pressed his hands to my neck and tried to stop the bleeding. But I guess he failed, because the next time I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in a hospital, or in jail, or on my way to either of those two places._

_No, I woke up somewhere else entirely. I was confused at first, because everything looked strange, and then I realized that it was all backwards. No matter where I turned or how far I ran, everything was backwards. Like it had been flipped. Like I was looking at the world through a mirror._

_And I seemed to have become entirely invisible, though I learned that that wasn’t the full truth. If I stand in front of a mirror, while someone else looks in it, then it’s my face that will be reflected back at them, not theirs. It’s the only time that the world ever looks right, when I look at it through a mirror._

_I have the freedom to roam the world, and I never get tired or hungry or thirsty. When I bump into people on the street they can feel it, but they can’t hear me no matter how loudly I scream. And I do scream, quite a lot more than I used to. Because every time someone breaks a mirror, any mirror at all, anywhere in the world, I feel like they are breaking me, shattering me into a million pieces. But I never die. I’m just left to wish that I could curse each of those people with a thousand years of bad luck for the pain that they put me through. But I suppose that would just be crazy. After all, what does breaking a mirror have to do with bad luck?_

_Statement ends._

Jon cleared his throat when he finished reading, and carefully set the paper down. Of course it had to be fake. Even with no research attached, he could figure out that a person trapped in a strange mirror world wouldn’t be able to write anything. Though when he looked closely, he almost thought that perhaps the handwriting was so messy because some of the letters were looped in the wrong direction. But no, that was ridiculous.

He set the statement down in the ever growing stack of fakes. It’s not as though there was anything that could be really verified, since no name or date or location had ever been mentioned. Just to cover his bases, he did a quick online search, and found no reports of a teenager who destroyed a shop and then killed herself. 

Jon shrugged and took another sip of his tea, though it was now too cold and he swallowed with a grimace. He looked down at the tea in disappointment, and then leapt up to his feet and dropped the mug, where it chipped and spilled out cold tea across the carpet. Maybe he was the one going crazy, but he thought that he had seen a face that was clearly not his own peering up from the wavering surface of the tea.

Martin barged into the office a moment later, and looked quite worried. “Is everything alright? You let out a yell…” he trailed off as he looked at the mug that was now lying on the floor, not completely broken but certainly cracked enough that it would no longer hold any liquid. “Oh no, your favorite mug.”

Jon blinked a few times, as he hadn’t been aware that he even had a favorite mug. Then it occurred to him that tea probably didn’t magically appear on his desk each day and Martin- but no, now wasn’t the time for that. Right now he had something to focus on other than the bizarreness of Martin bringing him tea. “I have some theories I need to discuss,” he announced, proud of the way his voice didn’t waver. 

Martin gave him a long, searching look. “A-Alright…?”

“Yes. Tim and Sasha are almost certainly doing something actually useful, so that leaves you as my sounding board. Come on.” 

He grabbed his jacket and then walked past Martin, out of the office. Martin hurried after him, sounding more confused than worried now. “Where- where are we going?”

Jon glanced back at Martin just so that he could roll his eyes at the man. “To lunch. Obviously. It’s lunch time.” Then he continued forward, and heard Martin’s footsteps as he quickly caught up. He made sure to walk just fast enough that he was a couple of steps in front of Martin, so that the other man wouldn’t be able to see the bit of pink in Jon’s cheeks. And as he chatted with Martin over lunch, Jon couldn't help thinking that maybe sticking around with his current job wouldn't be so bad.


End file.
